Category: benjamin franklin

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African American Literature and the American Dream Syllabus

Whenever I teach an American literature survey course, the topic of the American Dream inevitably comes up. Typically, I ask students to define this mythological term and they reply with the standard answer, “The American Dream means happiness and success.” I elaborate upon this response by pointing them back, first to the Declaration of Independence, then to other texts. The Declaration states that “life, … Read More African American Literature and the American Dream Syllabus

A Different View of Jonathan Edwards

Typically, students’ exposure to Jonathan Edwards begins and ends with his sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (1741). By limiting what students read from Edwards, we create an image in our students’ minds, as we do with any author we teach, specifically in a literary surgery course, that portrays the eighteenth century theologian as nothing more that a Calvinist preacher who … Read More A Different View of Jonathan Edwards